Mercurial Musings

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

Me: IS THAT GONG FUCKING YOO???

#1 - Super Supportive

Character-focused, with slowly progressing story stuff. Things do happen, plot moves along, but this should be thought of as a slice of life thing. It looks, on the surface, like this is about super heroes - but really, there's basically zero traditional super hero stuff.

Instead, it's someone who has been chosen to gain super powers (which is really a thing granted by alien wizards, because ACTUALLY super powers are just locked-down highly specific magic) and how they deal with some disasters and growth and navigating having some secrets and stuff.

#2 - Bog Standard Isekai - It's technically an Isekai, but really the fact that the main character is from Earth has very little impact for the most part. It's a very well done LitRPG fantasy story, while still feeling unique in a good way. Not overly heavy on the LitRPG elements, and the world feels very realistic (meaning the fantasy stuff is consistent) without being gritty and grimdark.

#3 - Tyrants of Earth - The premise involves people from Earth gaining access to a sort of LitRPG world, but it takes place after this has had time to become somewhat normalized (and after the full-on wars that it caused have settled). Only a relative handful of people get to go there and gain powers and stuff, but can (mostly) go back and forth from there to Earth which means the story partly takes place on Earth.

The main character manages to have the best parts of the "better than everyone else at this and (almost) always wins" type of protagonist, while still coming across as a real and fallible person who isn't just a smug asshole. I mean, he's smug sometimes, but it's called out and he's probably doing it on purpose to mess with someone.

#4 - Die Trying - A fascinating take on a LitRPG. First of all, a big part of the plot is them calling out that the video game elements are strange and seem to warp reality: what does it mean to hit zero hit points? That's not how things work, you're injured to varying degrees but... oh, no, that guy hit zero and is just dead. Hmm. Okay, what about this dodge roll ability, I don't even know how to roll like that and... no, there I go.

But also, it's billed as a roguelike which made me assume the story would involve rapidly going through a scenario and resetting (via death) frequently. Instead, the story is taking it slow. Not what I would have guessed, but I'm really digging it.

Every night, the people who have been chosen as part of this bizarre game are teleported to a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. At the end of each "round" (or when they die) they wake up back on Earth. The story just keeps getting more interesting, and the main character is fascinating: on the surface he's a capitalism-poisoned guy who is obsessed with getting money, but there's a lot more underlying that.

#5 - Mage Tank - It's an Isekai, but with a very strange fantasy world. It's hard for me to articulate the vibe. I enjoyed it right away, but the story grows and matures over time and starts building some very interesting lore.

It's a little silly, and very over the top.

Honorable Mention - Leftover Apocalypse - this one is mine. It's not bad.

me in the car, 3 weeks into singing my now-stable, unique variant of Silent Night: "So I sing an improv version –"

the giant, who sometimes hears me on the baby monitor: "I know."

me: "In between lines, I add these two hoots that I think are pretty good. [demonstrates]"

nature is healing

by James Crews